Nonliteral language forms in children: In what order are they acquired in pragmatics and metapragmatics?

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to gain insight into nonliteral language acquisition by children. Two dimensions were introduced: the acquisition order of the different forms of nonliteral language from the standpoint of comprehension and metapragmatic knowledge, and the relationship between their understanding and metapragmatic knowledge about them. Three nonliteral forms – indirect requests (hints), idioms, and conversational implicatures – were studied in children divided into three age groups (6, 8, and 10 years) using a cross-sectional approach: each child was tested on all three nonliteral forms. Data was collected from a story completion task presented as a computer game (the child chose one of two pictures and explained why). The results indicated that nonliteral language comprehension (pragmatic skills) and metapragmatic knowledge are acquired in different orders. For comprehension, the order was: semantic-inference implicatures, indirect requests, idioms, sarcastic-inference implicatures. For metapragmatic knowledge, the order was: idioms, implicatures with a sarcastic or semantic inference, indirect requests. The discussion compares the results to available data on each of these forms, and proposes some future perspectives, both for the study of everyday language learning and for more theoretical questions. The analysis of the relationship between pragmatics and metapragmatics during language acquisition is also addressed.